Bayta grimaced, but nodded. “If you need them, they should give the Spiders the password filigree.”
“Filigree,” Morse repeated, nodding. “Got it.”
A server Spider came up, and we gave our dinner orders. “So what’s the rest of the plan?” Morse asked after the server had gone. “Specifically, what happens when we hit Sibbrava?”
“We get off and grab another tender that hopefully will be waiting for us,” I said, glancing reflexively at Scrawny and his dinner companions. Quadrail dining cars were acoustically designed to keep table conversations confined to those immediate environs, but checking for possible eavesdroppers was a habit trained security types like me found almost impossible to break. “We take a quick trip to the Melding’s secret location, present our case, and if we’re lucky an equally quick trip back to Sibbrava with some new passengers and a few crates of additional cargo.”
“And if they politely decline to join in the fun?”
“They won’t,” I said. “The essence of the Melding is about nurturing and cooperating with others. They consider the Modhri a somewhat dysfunctional member of the family, and want to help him.” I made a little hand gesture. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Morse said, his voice more grim than offended. “I’m more concerned about … the point is, Compton, that I’m starting to wonder if this is really the right time to be turning the Modhri into a lapdog. Seems to me that the wolf version is exactly what we need right now.”
“One: I said dog, not lapdog,” I reminded him. “Big difference. Two: you heard what I said about the Melding’s possible frequency shift.”
“And I’m thinking that’s a crock,” Morse said flatly. “It’s the same coral, the same polyps, the same sense of hearing with everyone. I don’t see how the Eyes’ attitude or whatever can make two sticks’ worth of difference.”
“Is that you talking, or the Modhri?” I asked.
“It’s me,” Morse growled. “But the Modhri’s not so sure, either.”
“You tell the Modhri he needs to remember who’s wearing the leader hat here,” I said. “And you both need to trust me.”
“The Modhri does.” Morse’s eyes flicked to Bayta. “I gather Bayta does, too.”
“And you?”
He looked me square in the eye. “Not so much.”
“That’ll change,” I promised him. “Sooner or later, that’ll change.”
I hoped to hell I was right.
TWENTY-THREE
The ten-day trip from Homshil to Sibbrava translated, in this case, to ten days of watchfulness, dit-recs and cards, meals and drinks, and, as it turned out, unnecessary anxiety.
Every time I left our compartment I expected Riijkhan or one of his friends to make some sort of trouble. But nothing of the sort ever happened. As far as I could tell, the whole Shonkla-raa community could have decided to give up and go away.
Which just meant that what they were really doing was gathering their strength for some seriously massive attack.
I could hardly wait.
We reached Sibbrava and the four of us transferred to another of the Spiders’ modified tenders. Three and a half hours later, we pulled into the unfinished station in the still unnamed Cimmal system where the Melding had set up their new home.
A long-range service vehicle, also modified for Human use, was waiting at the hatchway for us. With a service Spider at the controls, and a defender Spider standing beside him, we headed out into space.
With a near-Earth-type planet beckoning invitingly from the inner system, plus any number of moons and large asteroids available for warren habitats, my assumption had always been that the Melding’s leaders had moved inward from the Tube. It was something of a surprise, therefore, when our transport instead turned outward, toward the vast emptiness of the outer solar system.
In retrospect, though, it made sense. Quadrail Tubes typically touched their client systems far out in the local sun’s gravity well, putting ninety-nine-plus percent of the useful real estate on the inward side of the line. The handful of hardy knowledge-seekers who might go in the other direction would never even spot a lone, silent ship drifting through all that blackness.
Or in this case, six ships: six old survey/sampling vessels, Cimman design, probably leftovers from the system’s initial exploration sweep. The ships were linked together by wide transfer cylinders, with an industrial-sized fusion generator trailing along behind the whole thing like a pet dog on a leash.
Docked beside one of the ships in the cluster was a torchferry, presumably the vehicle the Melding used to get back and forth to the Tube when necessary. None of the other ships’ docking ports had the glowing red outlining that would indicate it was receiving guests, but our Spider seemed to know where he was going. He maneuvered us alongside the ship on the opposite side of the cluster from the torchferry, and I felt the slight tremor as the docking collars engaged. “Okay,” I said, as our engines went silent. “You all sit tight. I’ll go in and make sure everything’s okay.”
“No,” Morse said, his voice tight. “We go together.”
“Morse—”
“They want to see all of us,” he said. “Might as well go in together and get it over with.”
Back when Bayta and I first sneaked Rebekah off New Tigris and out of the Modhri’s hands she’d said there were about three hundred of these Melding people. From the size of the crowd gathered in the shuttle hangar bay as we walked inside, it looked like the whole crowd had come out to greet us.
And not all of them had friendly looks on their faces. Not even most of them.
I cleared my throat. “Hello,” I called, my voice echoing strongly in the hangar despite all the people gathered there. “I’m Frank Compton.”
“We know who you are,” a Jurian in the center of the front row said. “We know who all of you are.” His gaze swept over us, settled on Morse. “Why are you here?”
“We need your help,” I said. “The Shonkla-raa have revived—”
“Why are you here?” the Jurian repeated.
Only then did I realize he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Morse. Or rather, to the Modhri inside Morse.
I shifted my attention to Morse. He gave a little nod, as if giving silent permission to an unspoken question.
And abruptly his face sagged subtly as the Modhri took over his body. “To see if I can be changed,” he said.
“And if you can?” the Jurian asked. “Will all of you—the entire Modhri—accept this change?”
“Why can’t they just make him?” Terese murmured from beside me, her usual shoulder-chip attitude momentarily eclipsed by the eerie gravity of the moment. “They’ve got to have hundreds-to-one odds on him.”
The Jurian had good ears. “We won’t impose our will on anyone,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly to Terese before returning to Morse. “Will all of you accept this change, Modhri?”
Morse braced himself. “I won’t hide from you that I fear this.” He looked at me, as if seeking reassurance. Or else reminding himself what was at stake. “But more frightening is the thought of being a slave to the Shonkla-raa,” he added. “Yes. All of me will accept the change.”
The Jurian nodded. “Then open yourself,” he said. “Do not resist. Open yourself to us, and allow us to bring forth the person that you can be. The person you were perhaps meant to be.”
I don’t know what I was expecting. Something dramatic, I suppose, something in line with life-changing events in the dit-rec dramas I’d watched over the years. But there was nothing of the sort. Morse’s head twitched back a bit, more like the precursor to a sneeze than anything else.
And then, he turned to me, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said, the same bewilderment in his voice.